The Boston Globe’s Health and Science section has a number of stories about genetics and personal genomics today. Here are the excerpts.

Colin Nickerson looks at DNA unraveled, which is a sweeping overview of the current state of genetics.

But the picture now emerging is more complicated, one in which illness, health, and evolutionary change appear to be the work of almost fantastical coordination between genes and swaths of DNA previously written off as junk.

And yet, employers and insurers are not the only companies interested in genetics. The nascent industry of genetic diagnostics – in which companies offer at-home kits allowing customers to send off DNA samples for analysis – might not be restricted by [Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act] (GINA) or other laws.

In those cases, customers would need to read the fine print to make sure their DNA would not be sold to, say, pharmaceutical companies.

Even when we each start carrying around our personal genome disks in our pockets, our data will differ from our children’s in thousands of ways. And even where our genes look identical to theirs, our bodies and minds could well differ, influenced by many other factors, including the portions of our DNA that don’t code for genes, our environment, and our behavior.

“The big premise that underlies our work is that cancer is a disease of the genome,” says Garraway, 39. “What goes wrong in a cancer cell? The genome is deranged, the DNA is mutated. But embedded within those chaotic changes are answers.”

Funny that this is based on what you see through the microscope. If only someone would produce a useful information display that could encapsulate at a glance what is known to science about a person’s karyotype. It could use sparklines and treemaps, and automatically update itself as research reveals new genotypic links.

Closer to star trek medicine– It could come to the consumer in the form of a credit-card sized display that automatically updates itself, that you carry in your wallet.

I am a parent frugal by nature (inherited the genes); by upbringing (born and raised with a scarcity in everything, food, books, no toys to speak of) and by reality (two little kids, a meager income, and burning desire for the kids to become something).

â€œBridging East and West: The Chinese Diaspora and Lin Yutangâ€ weaves like a DNA strand through the Metropolitan Museumâ€™s Chinese galleries. Focused on a single-family art collection, the show has the casual logic of a household photo album, with evidence of shared habits, tastes and temperaments, and of rapport between generations.

With much talk this past week that women science bloggers were not well represented in The Scientist article on favorite life science blogs, I thought it might be good to be reminded of how powerful women have become around the world. Late last month, Forbes.com (fond of making lists of the wealthy and fabulous) created a list of the world’s 100 most powerful women. Out of these, here are the women who have power in biotechnology and healthcare, not including government leaders who are obviously involved in peripheral ways.

At the youthful age of 46, with only a few years of operational business experience, Braly has become the most powerful woman in health care. The 42,000-employee behemoth runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in 14 states and its health plans have up to 60% market share.

In addition to focusing on health issues and conquering AIDS, the $33.4 billion foundation Gates has run with her husband for the past 10 years began making grants in 2006 aimed at ending hunger and poverty.

Widely considered the most powerful woman in biotech, Desmond-Hellmann came to Genentech in 1995 after having designed the studies that got Taxol, a breakthrough chemotherapy, approved at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Within a year, Desmond-Hellmann became the company’s chief medical officer.

Burns rose through the ranks as a scientist at Dow Corning, becoming chief executive in February 2003. Today she oversees a company whose silicon-based technologies are inside a wide range of products, from baby wipes to highways.

Folks following the calorie restriction with optimal nutrition (CRON) lifestyle must be crowing with delight today. New research shows that calorie restriction puts cells under stress but instead of causing cell damage, two genes–SIRT3 and SIRT4–are activated that actually protect cells from aging. Dr. David Sinclair has found that cells from laboratory rodents who were made made to fast for 48 hours experienced the following sequence of events:

Activation of the Nampt protein

Boost in mitochondrial NAD+ production

Activation of SIRT3 and SIRT4 genes which begin producing enzymes

These enzymes rejuvenate the mitochondria so that it can continue generating energy for the cell. Consequently, apoptosis (cell death) and resultant aging are delayed.

Peter Voss has written a number of articles about CRON in which he says that calorie restriction does not have to be difficult or unpleasant. He says CRON practitioners should aim for a target BMI of around 18.5 or body fat of about 5% for men and 8% for women.

CRON is all about nutrition for optimum health. When I was in AN [anorexia] mode I didnâ€™t care about anything other than calories. So I totally shunned fat in any form, stayed away from high carb food, minimized protein, and generally just nibbled on carrots, apples, celery, and the other usual stuff. No concept of nutrition was in my head, no ideas about how food was a source of life, health, and even an increased lifespan.

CRON is the opposite. Itâ€™s all about eating, with the focus being on as much nutritional bang for the buck as possible. So there isnâ€™t a lot of room for junk food, sweets, or desserts, because they just arenâ€™t nutritious. There is a lot of room for vegetables, fruit, lean protein sources, and high-quality fats.

Humans are 99.2 percent similar to a chimpanzee, but as [Hopkins cancer researcher] Don Coffey has pointed out, no chimpanzee has ever written a piano concerto. Why is that? Well, in addition to epigenetics, it’s because of our cell signaling pathways. They are truly the wiring network in our cells. When they’re triggered, they lead to a specific set of expressions of genes, telling a cell to proliferate, to die, to send out new blood vessels… These signaling pathways are how a cell does all these things. I’ll go out on a limb here: Most human disease is driven at the end of the day by these signaling pathways getting messed up and leading to disease too early in life.